Chapter
4:
Monitoring

What
Is Human Rights Monitoring?

The term monitoring,
as it is used in this publication, is the process of systematically
tracking activities of and actions by institutions, organizations or
governmental bodies. Monitoring has been an essential component of effective
human rights work for a long time and many organizations have gained
valuable experience in their years of monitoring civil and political
rights in their countries. In its Handbook on Fact-Finding and Documentation
of Human Rights Violations, Forum-Asia explains that monitoring involves
two interrelated activities: collection of information (or fact- finding)
and documentation. Human rights organizations collect information and
data "to determine the truth as accurately and completely as possible"
concerning the compliance of a government with its human rights obligations.
The handbook further explains that "documentation is the process of
systematically recording and organising the information for easy retrieval
and dissemination."

Focus
and Purpose of Monitoring

The purpose
and focus of an organization's monitoring activities will depend upon
the issues the organization addresses, the goals and priorities it has
set to address them, and the strategies it employs to do so. The following
are examples of objectives and focuses of monitoring:

providing immediate
assistance: Human rights organizations may be called upon to
help individuals or communities experiencing a particular crisis
or problem. Monitoring in this situation may be aimed at gathering
first-hand information from the victims or affected communities
in order to identify the source of the problem and pursue administrative,
legal or other action to obtain redress.

education and mobilization:
Human rights monitoring may be undertaken "for the purpose of mounting
campaigns and publicity to create awareness among the public and
to mobilize them to put pressure on the authorities not only to
stop violations but also to prevent further violations." Fact-finding
and documentation for this purpose could focus on situations affecting
large communities, such as a mass demolition of homes, or on individual
victims, to seek relief for the victims as well as to educate the
public about the nature of the human rights violations. (See Chapter
5 on Education and Mobilization)

monitoring to assess
"progressive realization":
As described in Chapter 2, organizations may choose to advocate
for ESC rights using the provision in the ICESCR related to progressive
realization. For this purpose, organizations may begin by formulating
a picture of the status of a government's commitment to ESC rights
by collecting documents and other information about policy statements,
legislation, social programs, court rulings, and so on, which pertain
to a given right. They may compare, over time, changes in the development
of state activities affecting the right, thereby establishing a
record of conduct to demonstrate trends. Demonstration of regressions
in ESC rights policies and practices could be used in national courts
or within international fora to argue that the government is failing
to fulfill its international obligations.

litigation:
Accurate fact-finding and documentation are a critical component
of building individual human rights claims and public interest cases.
Monitoring activities for litigation would include first-hand collection
of facts and evidence related to the specific claim. It would also
involve research into the evolution of the laws being invoked and
analyzing court decisions related to ESC rights claims to understand
prior decisions of the courts. (See Chapter
6 on Policy Work, Legislative Advocacy and Litigation).

undertaking legislative
advocacy and policy formulation: Similar to the work related
to monitoring for "progressive realization", data collection for
these activities could involve collection of legislative documents,
policy statements, social service agency programs and plans. It
could also involve collecting first-hand data from affected communities
and victims to provide evidence about the effect of existing policies
and laws, or the need for laws and policies where they do not currently
exist. (See Chapter 6 on Policy Work,
Legislative Advocacy and Litigation).

making submissions
to intergovernmental agencies: Some human rights organizations
may choose to submit reports or assist with filing complaints to
intergovernmental agencies and treaty bodies. For this purpose,
the focus of monitoring would be to observe the government's performance
related to its international commitments. One form of monitoring
would be to observe the government's compliance with recommendations
produced by a treaty body in response to a government's official
report. (See Chapter 7 on Work with Intergovernmental Bodies).

Principles
Related to Human Rights Monitoring

Though the
type of information organizations seek and the institutions and actors
they monitor in their ESC rights work may differ to some extent from
that related to civil and political rights work, the fundamental principles
and approaches are the same.

Impartiality
and Accuracy

Forum-Asia
notes,

Fact-finding
must be thorough, accurate and impartial. It must not only be impartial
and accurate but must also be perceived as such. The results of fact-finding
must be credible and reliable. In short, abundant caution should be
followed to ensure the credibility of information collected and disseminated.

The extent
to which the fact-finding and documentation is guided by human rights
standards, rather than by ideological or partisan interests, will largely
determine the level of impartiality of human rights monitoring. The
accuracy of information is strengthened through the process of corroboration,
that is, collecting and comparing many pieces of evidence.

Application
of Human Rights Standards

Human rights
monitoring involves the use of international human rights standards
and consti- tutional rights guarantees to assess the information which
is gathered. The standards are applied to evaluate whether or not harm
done is a question of human rights, whether an individual case can be
pursued as a rights case, whether proposed legislation or judicial reform
should be pursued as a matter of human rights and corresponding state
obligation, and so on.

Application
of human rights standards to ESC rights monitoring is currently more
difficult than it is for civil and political rights because, as already
stated, most of these rights are less clearly defined. The standards
can, nonetheless, help identify and define what information to collect.
The relationship of monitoring to the elaboration of ESC rights is dynamic
and dialectical: monitoring activities can help identify aspects of
the core content of rights which need further elaboration, and conversely,
more elaborated standards and indicators better guide activists to what
they ought to monitor.

Utilizing
Diverse Sources of Information

In collecting
data, it is important to locate and utilize as many sources of information
as possible. Some potential sources were identified by workshop participants:

affected communities
or individuals

periodic government
budget or policy reports

reports by or interviews
with service and advocacy NGOs

papers and studies
produced by academic or research institutions

legislative and judicial
records

human rights commissions
or other quasi-governmental bodies

the press

Because large
communities are affected by economic and social policies, often NGOs
will not have the time or financial resources to undertake the relevant
primary data collection and statistical analysis themselves and will
have to rely on other sources of information for their monitoring work.
Groups should keep in mind that the information available through any
source is biased and limited. Activists need to be resourceful, creative
and persistent in identifying and using diverse sources of information.

A challenge
activists may face in ESC data collection and monitoring is that a considerable
portion of the economic and social data collected will take the form
of technical plans, economic analyses and statistics -- information
with which organizations that have traditionally focused on civil and
political rights may not be comfortable and may not have the skills
to analyze and understand. If such data is to be employed, it may be
necessary to recruit the help of someone who does have the technical
background, or developing the capacity to analyze and use such data
within the organization itself. Most statistical compilations and reports
issued by non-human rights institutions do not use human rights indicators
and for this reason considerable cooperation between individuals experienced
in analyzing human rights standards and those with other technical expertise
will be required.

Data
Collection from and with Victims and Affected Communities

Human rights
organizations may collect information from affected communities and
victims in order to determine the facts necessary for seeking redress
in a given situation. Organizations may also undertake fact-finding
in communities in order to present "case studies" to help illustrate
how figures about human rights trends generated through statistical
analysis manifest themselves on an individual basis. Such case studies
give flesh to the local and national nature of individual entitlements
of, and state obligations to, the rights. Forum Asia has outlined several
important principles that activists should bear in mind when seeking
first-hand information from affected communities and victims (see box
above).

Considerations
in Fact-finding with Affected Communities and Victims

Forum-Asia
suggests that human rights monitors keep in mind the following
principles when working with affected communities and victims:

Monitors should
be open-minded.

Affected communities
and victims should be the primary concern of monitors and
all monitoring activities should be done with respect and
empathy

Investigation
into situations and cases can be a major intrusion into the
lives of individuals and communities; activists should undertake
their work with this awareness in mind.

Human rights
fact-finding and documentation should be done in ways which
are sensitive to cultural contexts and norms.

Workshop participants
also stressed that collection of information by and with the community
is critical to effective human rights activism. They expressed concern
that too often the value of this type of community involvement is ignored,
leaving the data collection and monitoring to "experts". However, individuals
in the community have the most detailed and intimate knowledge of the
nature and extent of their needs and the impact of programs and policies
on their lives. As a result they should be involved not only in setting
the agenda and priorities for human rights activism, but in the collection
of data and the monitoring of events and conditions. Community monitoring
is also a powerful tool for increasing the people's awareness about
their rights.

Data
Collection from NGOs and Community-Based Organizations

NGOs and community
based organizations (CBOs) which provide services to communities, such
as legal aid groups, health-care providers and community development
workers are often very useful sources of information for human rights
fact-finding. Practitioners have direct contact with claimants or clients
and develop an intimate understanding of the problems and issues people
face. They are well-situated to identify trends in the types of complaints
or problems communities bring and may, therefore be able to identify
patterns upon which human rights claims can be made.

The
Galilee Society Collects Community Data

The
Galilee Society was established by a group of local Arab health
professional to address the many health and sanitation problems
of Arabs in Israel. In 1992, the Galilee Society took a case to
the International Water Tribunal (IWT), a non-governmental tribunal
based in Amsterdam, on behalf of Bedouin living in "unrecognized
villages." The Galilee Society had established community health
clinics staffed by local health professionals. When there was
an outbreak of hepatitis, the staffs of the clinics were able
to establish a basis for litigation at the IWT. Using information
and data collected by the clinics in the communities, the Society
could demonstrate that the hepatitis outbreak was caused by dirty
water the communities were forced to use due to Israel's deliberate
denial of water services to them. The IWT ruled that there was
not a justification for Israel to deny water to the unrecognized
villages. (Also see chapter 1
for more about the Galilee Society.) Using Government Reports
and Information

Most
government agencies undertake regular data collection and analysis for
the purpose of policy formulation, budgeting and periodic reporting
on implementation of programs. These and other official reports are
important sources of information. Human rights NGOs are normally skeptical
of government-generated data and information. However, workshop participants
explained that even a biased or skewed government report can be informative
and useful if analyzed with a critical eye. Sometimes, taking note of
what is left out of a report can be useful for discerning areas the
government has avoided or neglected. Activists can also use official
data to hold governments accountable for what they claim to do, employing
data collected through other sources to evaluate actual performance.

Some activists
also face difficulties collecting data from governmental sources. They
encounter very long and arduous processes of working through government
bureaucracies only to discover that the desired statistics are "classified"
and unavailable to the public. Freedom of information is a fundamental
issue related to effective human rights monitoring and advocacy. In
many countries, disclosure mechanisms are seriously inadequate; this
is an important area of advocacy for and related to ESC rights activism.

Activists
face a range of other difficulties in this area depending on the contexts
within which they operate. For those who rely on government reports
as a source of information, a major problem is the lack of consistency
in what the government reports on from year to year; one year the government
may examine certain indicators while during the next period these indicators
may be altogether ignored. Furthermore, activists commonly relay that
even when they find pertinent statistics or information, that information
has not been recorded in a way that corresponds to the rights they seek
to monitor. This problem underscores the need for activists to develop
human rights indicators and relate information to these indicators.
It also points to the need for organizations to develop their own skills
in fact-finding and in conducting surveys and other community research
techniques, as well as in cross-checking information.

In addition,
human rights activists have found that in countries where corruption
is a serious problem, or where the ESC rights issues being explored
are connected to highly controversial or volatile situations, it can
be dangerous to seek government information.

One source
of information that should be particularly noted is official government
reports to intergovernmental agencies and treaty bodies. Under various
treaties and other international agreements, states parties generally
have a reporting requirement. For example, states parties to the International
Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights are required to submit
a report to the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights every
five years. Similarly, states parties to the Convention on the Elimination
of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) are required every
four years to submit a report to that convention's monitoring body.
As described earlier, the recommendations made by these bodies in response
to government reports are a useful tool for tracking the compliance
of governments with their international obligations.

Problems
and Challenges

Though mentioned
often throughout this resource, it deserves repeating that one of the
biggest challenges organizations initiating work in ESC rights face
is the lack of elaboration of the core contents of ESC rights. Deciding
what exactly to monitor and how is especially difficult when there is
not yet clear understanding of what entitlements the rights entail,
what the fundamental state obligations are, and what, consequently,
constitutes a violation of rights. Workshop participants stressed, however,
that when human rights activists began to address civil and political
rights, there was little clarity or agreement about the content of these
rights and it has only been through persistent work that the standards
for these rights are as detailed as they are today.

Another challenge
in human rights monitoring relates to the role of non-state actors such
as national and multi-national companies. The human rights approach
involves holding governments accountable for their obligations based
on international law and constitutional guarantees. The implementation
of social policies and functioning of economies, however, involve a
large and extremely complex pool of actors. In many situations, the
actors primarily responsible for infringing or denying individual's
rights are non-state parties. Effective human rights work ultimately
must learn how best to address such actors, though currently the question
of standards and accountability of non-state actors is vague and controversial.
This presents an unresol

45. Provea uses the term "victim"
when referring to a deliberate action by the government or government
officials. It uses "affected group" to refer to situations
when the government has failed or omitted to develop a policy or where
there is a lack of political will to address a problem for which it
is responsible.